THE ANCIENT WORLD
the war, and was hailed with something like divine
honours. He was appointed dictator and invested with
legal powers far more comprehensive than any that had
ever been held before him.
The Senate voluntarily surrendered its powers to the
conqueror of Gaul. Once again the Republican aristo-
cracy had to Bow the head to a dictator. Caesarism was
born. By one of those misapprehensions which so
plentifully strew the path of history and of politics, the
word has come to be a synonym for reaction, whereas the
fact is that Caesarism was rigidly opposed to the old
institutions, to the patrician class and the conservatives.
Feeling his position secure, Caesar set himself to reform
the State on a great scale. Reforms of the judicial
system, social legislation, statutes affecting slaves and
regulating their employment, sumptuary laws to limit
and control the display of wealth and luxury —all these
followed one after another, in quick succession. The
whole thing was pretty definitely Fascist and explains
Mussolini's worship of the 'divine Julius'.
But there was one thing above all others that was
Caesar's crowning glory; one thing that has made his
name immortal. He always rose above the level of mere
party considerations. Like Pericles at Athens, he had
but one thing at heart, the glory and the greatness of
his country.
His political insight enabled him to understand that,
after being torn asunder by so many years of civil strife,
the thing the country longed for beyond all others was
peace. This he hastened to bring about by means of
generous amnesties, by being the first to set the example
5°